Notebook
The steps being taken by the Irish Government to strengthen the Republic's security legislation reflect an admirable determination to deal with the menace of the IRA, and we should all be grateful. But there is another threat to which the Irish should perhaps pay greater attention. This is the threat posed by the Russian embassy in Dublin, which has now become a major base for espionage operations. Since 1971 the policy of the Soviet espionage authorities has been to expand their operations in Ireland. One of their aims, so British security sources understand, has been to sustain a high level of violence in Ulster, thereby weakening Britain's commitment to NATO by tying up an increasing number of British troops in the province. The establishment of an embassy in Dublin was a high priority for the KGB. Not only could it be used to succour the Marxist Sinn Fein, but it could also serve as a base for espionage activities in the United Kingdom itself.
Formal diplomatic relations between Ireland and the Soviet Union were not in fact established until 1974. Until then, Ireland had taken the view that its economic circumstances did not justify the maintenance of an embassy in Moscow. But after joining the EEC, where it found itself the only member country having no diplomatic relations with Russia, it decided to fall into line. It went ahead despite warnings from the British, who had been told by Czechoslovak defectors of the KGB's intentions.
Before 1974, Russia's contacts in Dublin, apart from a few clandestine agents, were confined to officials of the Czechoslovak trade mission. They had been instructed to organise the supply of arms to the Provisionals. But with the establishment of diplomatic relations in May 1974, the situation underwent a great improvement from the Russian point of view. Great care was taken in the selection of an Ambassador, Mr Anatoly Kaplin. a former Minister-Counsellor in West Germany, who, according to CIA sources, had been well-known to counterintelligence services in Sweden and Norway, where he had served before going to Bonn. A biographer of Lenin, Mr Kaplin issued a statement before taking up his post in Dublin, declaring he was honoured to be the first ambassador to a country 'which was the first in the world to cast off the colonial yoke.'
Mr Kaplin has a large embassy staff, all hand-picked by the KGB. Some months ago it looked as if the Russian strategy might be threatened. Ireland's former Justice Minister, Mr Desmond O'Malley, accused the embassy's diplomats, including the ambassador, of having KGB connec tions. He also claimed that the representatives of the Soviet Government in Dublin, officially listed as seventeen, in fact numbered thirty. But this claim, supported by British security sources, was subsequently rejected by the Irish Foreign Minister, Dr Garret Fitzgerald, and the furore died down within twenty-four hours. With Ireland's limited security apparatus now fully stretched in coping with the Provisional IRA, the Russians are left fairly free to conduct their subversive activities. After only two and a half years' experience of a Russian diplomatic presence in Dublin, the Irish Government would be well advised to keep a closer watch on the embassy in Orwell Road—and if necessary follow the example of Britain in 1971 and expel the agents of the KGB.
Michael Foot has been spending his holiday in a civilised way re-reading Disraeli, one of the authors, he says, whom he reads constantly in the hope of keeping sane. He regards Disraeli as a good Tory who was also, as even his later novels prove, a revolutionary at heart, but who wrapped it all up in a Byronic irony. 'Radical' would seem a better word than 'revolutionary', but the confusion perhaps comes naturally to Mr Foot.
The devolution debate becomes ever more bizarre as former Prime Ministers weigh in. Sir Harold Wilson's contribution is surely the strangest of all : apparently the regions should be given taxation powers although his own government's White Paper quite specifically ruled out such powers for the Scottish Assembly. Meanwhile Lord Home and Mr Heath have both proposed a referendum—a device to which they were opposed over membership of the EEC.
Publication of a book by David Pryce-J ones about the ill-starred Unity Mitford, one of the Hons and Rebels who was Hitler's disciple and friend, has been delayed. It was due out in August, but will not now appear before November. Proof copies have been in circulation for weeks.
The publishers, Weidenfeld and N icolson, admit to 'four small changes' in Mr PryceJones's original text, but will not say at whose instigation they have been made. Objections have been lodged by Sir Oswald Mosley. 'The lawyers are at it at the moment,' he says. 'It has been going on since July.' Unity Mitford was a sister of Lady Mosley.
Another sister is the Duchess of Devonshire, who refused to speak to the author when he was writing the book. One of the Mitford sisters did cooperate, however: Jessica, the former Communist, who lives in the United States.
The Duchess of Devonshire is said to be outraged by what has happened; likewise her son, the Marquess of Hartington. But indignation is not confined to the family: half the higher aristocracy seem to have joined the attack on Mr Pryce-Jones, among them Lord Lambton. They are accusing him, in effect, of 'letting the side down'.
Their feelings are, of course, understandable. No one could write truthfully about Unity M it ford and her mis-spent life without affecting the reputation of her family and— by extension—of their innumerable wellborn friends, not a few of whom shared her sympathies before the war.
It is very good news that the Indian government has lifted censorship on the foreign press, more especially as the main reason for its imposition is thought to have been the inconsistency of censoring domestic but not foreign journalists. Now that that inconsistency has been recreated one must hope that it will lead, this time, to the removal Of all press censorship in India.
'At the same time, I have announced prOposals for the most massive reform of company law. Individual abuses, such as insider dealing, will be ended and become a criminal offence. Of far more importance, as a result of this legislation we will create the most open free enterprise system in the world. We will provide for a system where free enterprise discloses to the nation not just the standard accounting information, but also facts that will 'allow the employees, the public and the shareholders to judge companies are carrying out their wider responsibilities to society. Corporations are in themselves a substantial proportion of our modern society. As such, they must bear their proportion of responsibility, their responsibilities for the safety and health of their employees; their responsibilities to' wards the environment of the communities in which they are situated; their responsibilities to the consumer.' That was Mr Peter Walker, founder member with Mr Slater of the ill-fated Slater, Walker Securities, speaking as Secretary of State for Trade and Industry at the Conservative Party conference in 1973.
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